In agriculture, and particularly in the agricultural seed industry, planting seed is generated in high volumes by large seed manufacturers. The seed is loaded into seed boxes which typically include a base and a removable upper ring portion which sits on and engages the base thereby practically doubling the height and volumetric capacity of the box. Typical seed boxes store approximately 50 acres of seed and weigh about 150 pounds. It is common for very large seed manufacturers to process hundreds and hundreds of seed boxes per day and have 4000-8000 seed boxes in circulation or storage.
Prior to filling, or on return from field customers and farmer end users, the seed boxes are often dirty, littered with debris and not suitable for filling with new seed. In the past, manual operations, for example several human operators with high-pressure power washers, were employed to spray and wash the interiors of the seed boxes to flush out undesired debris. Past devices and methods were slow, labor intensive and not suitable for high volume processes.
There is a need for a highly automatic, high volume and efficient device and process to wash agricultural seed boxes and other similar containers to support high volume industrial processes.